In a deregulated electricity market energy retailers undertake to supply electricity to consumers. The energy retailers then source this electricity from energy generators who generate the electricity using a variety of power plants, each having its own running costs and lead time to come onstream.
The price which the energy retailer pays the electricity generators for this electricity is affected by many factors including supply contracts and government regulation, but in general is driven by supply and demand. That is, in times of high demand, the price paid by the electricity retailer increases. Demand varies continuously by time of day and time of year. The price variation may be many orders of magnitude, with, for example, the marginal price of an additional kWh (kilowatt hour) varying from one cent to more than ten thousand dollars.
Due to commercial realities and political constraints, and technical limitations, it is not possible for the energy retailer to simply pass on the marginal cost directly to the consumer. The cost to the consumer of a kWh is generally fixed at a price significantly greater than the lowest marginal cost payable by the energy retailer, but very much less than the maximum possible marginal cost payable by the energy retailer; generally from tens to hundreds of cents per kWh. The consumer tariff may include coarse variation by time of day and time of year, with higher prices for periods expected to be peak demand periods, but there is no direct relationship between the marginal cost paid by an energy retailer at a given time and the amount being paid by the consumer using that marginal kWh.
Energy retailers, producers and distributors, in regulated or deregulated markets, may be placed in a position where demand for energy exceeds the available supply. This can lead to brownouts where the electricity supply to some areas is cut in order to maintain supplies to at least some areas. Blackouts may also be experienced should demand cause the voltage in the distribution network to drop below critical levels.
Computer devices, in particular personal computer devices, are routinely designed to enter a low power or standby mode when a user has not operated the computer for a defined period of time. We refer to this mode as a low power standby mode. The low power standby mode is a mode where the computer cuts or reduces the provision of power to superfluous areas of the computing device while the computer is not in use. Different degrees of reduction of power may be covered by the term low power standby mode, which may alternatively be called “sleep” or “hibernate”. These allow a user to resume working or operating a machine from the standby mode without having to go through an extended reboot process. The difference between them is likely to be the speed with which the computer is able to return to full operating mode from the standby mode.
Entering a low power standby mode on a computer device will provide energy savings. However, users may find such entry to be inconvenient, especially when it is unexpected. Since the delay period for entering standby is typically set by the user, a user will often seek to avoid unexpected entry into standby mode by setting extended timeframes for the low power standby mode to be entered, resulting in a significant delay before the onset of the energy saving functionality.
Typically, a computer device will determine when to enter a low power standby mode based on a time period for which user input, usually in the form of keyboard or mouse use, is absent. Since a computer may be in use without such user input, this may lead to unexpected and unwanted activation of the low power standby mode. Such an occurrence is likely to prompt a user to greatly extend the time period before the low power standby is entered, meaning that the computer spends significant amounts of time unused but in a high power use mode.
In a business environment, it is not uncommon for users to disable the standby power mode, preferring the convenience of having the computer always on and ready to use without the need to provide user input (keyboard or mouse use) to stop the computer entering into the standby mode when the user does not wish this to happen.